We have a couple more orange pumpkins that are getting really big! ... and another white one on the way. =)

Also, I dig the black plant thing-- this past spring we planted "Black Magic" roses in our garden. Alas, the heat hasn't been nice to the plant, so I have no idea if it's going to bounce back when the weather cools or not. =/

VanHelsingStandIn wrote:WOW!! Those look great! I wish I could do that. But, I have the lifelong Brown thumb.

Ah... ah... I'll let Andy or Spooky take this one.

Jadewik, do a Google image search on gothic or dark gardens. There are some great ideas there. How are your vines doing? Are they dying off like mine did? I still have one that's going strong and I even have another pumpkin growing on it.

Yeah, my vines are dying off one by one, but I still have several that are green. They've stopped taking over my yard-- thank goodness. In the center of my garden, I have this giant orange pumpkin on a vine that's still green... and it's being shaded by a giant zucchini plant. If it weren't for the zucchini, I think that pumpkin would have split in the heat.

Alas, I've already planned my yard to be a little english country bit... and I'm tryin' to keep my yard cat friendly because my cats will eat anything. Of course, my husband loves trees and we have too many in our tiny 40'x20' yard. One of these days, my pistachio trees will fruit, though! ... and I will have lots of nuts. It's changed slightly since I created this graphic, but here's the general idea for my garden:

Our next step is to lay down the irrigation... hopefully we'll have money this spring to do that.... Bleh.

Glad I put a tarp down on my brand new oak floor! I'm gonna try spraying the rest of them with a bleach mix. I also spread them out and now that it's not getting so hot in the house I'm hoping they don't get so much moisture inside. If they can only hold on one more month so they can fulfill their destiny!

On the good side. I harvested two of the Cinderella pumpkins with one still left on the vine, and I appear to have another round of growth on the other vines. Tons of male flowers. Must be the phosphorus I added to the feeding? We don't have so many bees hanging around so I'm trying to catch the female buds myself. Pollinated two more this morning. The one I did a week or so ago is now about the size of a basketball.

I tried the pinching thing on one of the offshoot vines. I read that if you pinch the end of a vine it will stop growing and the plant will put more energy into producing fruit and flowers. There is a female bud growing on that vine so maybe it worked? Now I just have to watch that one and try to catch it when the flower opens.

Here are the Cinderellas. The bigger one got prematurely harvested when the dogs went wild and yanked the vine away from it. Looks like it's ripening just fine though.

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Lots of female buds are starting to show up! They should produce new pumpkins just in time for the big day. The 'Jack-o-lantern' variety vine seems very strong. It just keeps growing new vines and flowers, the vines are thick and sturdy. This one plant currently has 1 well grown pumpkin, 3 that are starting to grow, the two I pollinated this morning and at least 3 more females that look like they are gonna flower. That's a hardy plant.

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Like I mentioned, the second round of growth really seemed to take off when I moved the remaining vines over to where the water was, so they could re-root. Cutting all the dead leaves and vines away really seemed to help this growth spurt.

Feeding them more nitrogen when the vines were growing seemed to work well. The flowering sped up after I gave them extra phosphorous the other day. From what I read, once you get to the fruit growing stage you should give them extra potassium, but I haven't tried that yet. This will give more info on feeding the plants.

Something we noticed... before the first round of pumpkins grew we had trouble getting pollen out of the male flowers. Whether this was because the bees had already grabbed it or because the flowers were overrun by gnats or whatever those were, this time we have plenty of pollen. Some bees are still around but the gnats are gone. I wonder if they were eating the pollen? Have to figure out how to control those next year.

Oh yeah, when we were out there checking on the pumpkins this morning I heard a loud scream and saw a blond flash go flying into the house. Turns out my roommate was reaching in to pick some tomatoes and saw this little guy...

I carved one of the pumpkins I grew last night... only there was something very strange about it...

Back when we planted the garden, we did pumpkins (2 variety-- the white and the giant orange), watermelon (small, round), cantelope, honeydew, zucchini, and rhubarb. Most of the plants fried in the heat, but the watermelon and pumpkin did okay and the zucchini produced too much "fruit".

One of the pumpkins started out a light orange colour on one of the giant orange vines. The vine died (shortly after we were robbed b/c we forgot to water plants for a couple days) so we plucked the gourd and left it on the back patio. As it sat there, it ripened... turning a nice, lovely shade of green with stripes accented by dark orange around the stem. It looked like a pumpkin except for the strange, green hue.

Sunday night, I drew up a zombie carve pattern-- and I thought it would look good in green. So, last night, Monday, I carved the zombie into the "Wumpkin"-- I think it's a hybrid fruit-gourd. When I first cut it open, it smelled more melon than gourd. The pulp was whiter than usual and really, really moist despite sitting outside in +100*F (+37*C) heat for several weeks. It's structured like a pumpkin, but the shell is softer than a regular pumpkin and harder than a watermelon. The stringy insides were structured like a pumpkin... and the seeds looked like pumpkin seeds, but were black in the center like a watermelon. It was quite strange.

If I can get someone with a cellphone (since I'm living in the dark-ages w/out a cellphone) who has taken a photo to actually send it to my email... I could post it. LOL.

It must have got crossbred. Did you keep the seeds? Maybe grow some of those on purpose next year? I can't believe you don't have a digital camera! Do you also have a horse and buggy parked in the drive?

Things didn't work out so well for us. After all that work growing the pumpkins we ran out of time and didn't even get them all carved. We tried carving some last weekend but noticed they were drying out and shriveling by the next day, maybe a result of them ripening so early then sitting around in the heat? We decided to wait till the night before Halloween to carve the rest but work and other things came up and we couldn't get much done.

The dog vexed us yet again. Came home from work Halloween night, ready to finish setting up the yard, just to find out that the stupid bee decided to eat a couple of the pumpkins we carved. Including the giant pumpkin! What a pig! At least she didn't get sick like she did when she ate the Krispy Kreme donuts.

Most of my plans for the pumpkins didn't turn out but I was able to finish the werewolf and put it on display. We had people pulling their cars over and taking pictures of it and a few that wanted to buy them from me. The dog ate the headless horseman pumpkin so I didn't do the flaming lack-o-lantern head like I planned. So sad that the pumpkin I planned to carve the Frankenstein monster in was perfectly shaped for such a pattern. I guess I could carve them now just to get pictures but my heart isn't in it.

My roommate smashed one of the uncarved pumpkins in the drive and attached a dummy body to it, added a bunch of blood around the pumpkin head with me running over it with my truck to complete the scene. By then it was pretty dark and we had no way to light it so a lot of people didn't get a good look at it. Turned out awesome though.

Don't know yet if I'll try growing pumpkins again next year. Started clearing vines yesterday just to discover I still have pumpkins that haven't ripened yet. I guess they'll have a Thanksgiving destiny? Still looking forward to those homemade pumpkin pies.